When citizens participate in policy production, the advantages go beyond policy outcomes--though the presumption is that participation leads to better public policy. Robust democracy characterized by agonistic exchanges among policy actors ought to encourage learning, dialogue, empow­erment, equity, and a shared spirit of inquiry. This article…

The manner in which the built environment is constructed has a tremendous effect on the degree to which health, wealth and social outcomes are distributed within a society. This is particularly evident when a crisis of the natural environment affects the built environment, as was the case after the Haitian earthquake of 2010. Understanding the…

"Truthout" contributor, director of "Truthout's" Public Intellectual Project (truth-out.org/public-intellectual-project) and Truthout board member Henry A. Giroux responds to questions about how the excesses of neoliberal politics have reshaped and subverted the democratic mission of higher education.

The information giants, Google being the largest, trade every day and build high-valuation mega-opolies on the back of very personal information without including their sources of value with any tangible return for their investment of exclusive data. The time has come to ask the question whether the grand bargain of "cool tools" in…

The demise of capitalism was theoretically prophesied by Marx who posited that the world would come to such a state of destruction and human suffering that no amount of coercion or concessions would suffice to stop the massive uprisings that would lead us into a new socialist alternative. Although the downfall of world capitalism may seem…

The bloody First and Second World Wars awakened the dream of a cross-border peaceful territory supported by the Christian community principles of the clerics founding the first universities in the Middle Ages. Since the 1950s the European Union has been built up from six member states to reach twenty-seven, with more associate members. But…

The transformation of South Africa from a deeply iniquitous apartheid regime to a more inclusive democratic dispensation remains a huge challenge for all South Africans and its social institutions. The university remains one institution that is under severe pressure to transform. This pressure is exacerbated by the deeply entrenched apartheid…

This is a collaborative writing story in which songs and poems invite us into complexities of living the ideals and calling for new ways of making the world visible. I need to show you who I am. You need to show me who you are. They are never completed, always open to self and social reflection, and hopefully capable of pushing boundaries of both…

This article describes America's descent into madness under the regime of neoliberalism that has emerged in the United States since the late 1970s. In part, this is due to the emergence of a public pedagogy produced by the corporate-owned media that now saturates Americans with a market-driven value system that undermines those formative…

In this article, which is based on an invited keynote presentation given at the 14th biennial conference of the European Association for Research on Learning and Instruction (EARLI), the author discusses the question of how education should respond to the ongoing rise of the global networked society. He provides an analysis of the history and…

This article draws on autonomist theory in order to examine the role of creativity in educational policy and governance. Drawing examples primarily from the North American context, it suggests that extant efforts to manage creativity in secondary and higher education are ultimately unstable, revealing what the Edu-factory collective has referred…

In this article, the author explores the neoliberal impacts on higher education in Bangladesh, how market-driven policies might limit the education of arts, humanities and social sciences, and whether or not this phenomenon may have consequences for the future of democracy in the country. First, the author focuses on the privatisation of higher…

Widespread recognition of the detrimental effects that human activities have had on nature and its ecosystems can now be found in every domain of public policy. Since the inception of international accords in the 1970s provoked greater engagement by nations in environmental amelioration measures, "education" has been lauded as an important panacea…

This article argues that faith-based schools are a necessary feature of democratic and pluralistic societies and a legitimate expression of human rights as constituted in the European Convention in Human Rights (2000). It further argues that if the rights of parents to have a real choice for faith-based schools (regardless of ability to pay) are…

This article examines the role of political anger in democracy. It reviews the work of Stephane Hessel before examining the role and reception of anger in classical and modern thought. The author identifies two main traditions within which the concept of political anger can be located: revolutionary violence of the Marxist tradition and the…